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Is Open Source An Advantage For Game Developers?

Posted by timothy on from the if-they-want-to-be-in-debian-it-is dept.

chas7926 writes "OSNews.com is running an article that claims that the open source development model is not a very effective way to develop high quality games. Even the exceptions are not much of a threat to major label products. Does open source development only make sense for products like web servers and operating systems?"

6 of 493 comments (clear)

  1. Different Exceptions by Snowgen · · Score: 5, Informative

    Frozen Bubble? nah...

    My Exceptions would be BZFlag, Battle for Wesnoth, and FreeCiv.

  2. Re:Costs by tc · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are no "DirectX royalties". It's just like any other Windows API.

    The only downside to using DirectX (which comes with a very mature SDK, samples, docs, and helper libraries these days) would be if you cared about porting to non-Microsoft platforms. This is, of course, a real consideration for some, but certainly not for all.

  3. You can't open source everything... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The main reason is because developing a game seldom means rolling your own everything. Dozens of proprietary tools are used in the development process and simply can't be open sourced. Havok for example had parts of their source leaked when portions of the HL2 source was stolen. This was a bad thing for valve, and a bad thing for Havok. But that's just one example.

  4. Re:Costs by kb · · Score: 3, Informative

    DirectX ... ROYALTIES?

    What exactly did I miss here?

    kb
    game developer
    who never had to pay anything to MS so far for using Direct3D

  5. Settlers of Catan by saladyears · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sea3D is an open source version of Settlers of Catan that is 100% free, has ELO ladder rated matches, 3D graphics, 1000+ active users, and really nice artwork. I think certain genres are more suited to open source games. FPS and RTS are not in that list. Board games clones can probably cut it, though.

  6. Re:Flightgear by Animats · · Score: 3, Informative

    Have you ever actually tried FlightGear? It's painful. Far worse than Flight Simulator. Maybe half the cockpits actually work. Sometimes the artificial horizon ball goes floating around the cockpit. (Somebody did their transforms in the wrong order.) And there's a wierd "turbulence" effect when you cross from one scenery region to another, because the scenery loading concurrency was botched.